last year we air freighted 40 cartons back to kl one day after essen... you can find all the titles of last year's haul under "spiel 06 games" at http://web.mac.com/imagine_newszine.

havng said that, we made a mistake last year as we concentrated too much on the large publishers (zoch, kosmos, amigospiele, etc) and not the small, independant publishers - many of whom have not had their game distributed outside of essen, or picked up by a publisher for re-printing.

this year, we will do the business pre-essen with the big publishers, and concentrate on the small ones during the 4 days - hopefully, this will enable us to get our hands on some stuff that will never be seen after essen!

we try most games before we buy, so we have at least a feel whether our gamers will like it or not. fortunately, my own preferences take a back seat here! this means that with some working knowledge of the game + 1 week plus to read the rules, we should be ready for awana!

of course, i will be requesting for volunteers to teach many games, so if you like to be the first to check out the new stuff, please volunteer!